Meet Kansas City’s burgeoning community of urban farmers.
In Kansas City’s Ivanhoe neighborhood, a fifteen-block residential corridor along Woodland Avenue between 24th and 41st streets is home to nine agriculture operations
By Natalie Torres Gallagher | Photography By Chase Castor
Kansas City
May 2022
Excerpt:
Katherine Kelly founded Cultivate Kansas City in 2005. Back then, there was little urban farming happening in the area, and Cultivate KC’s main goal was to promote urban agriculture as an important arm of a healthy food system. The nonprofit was a major proponent—many would say the catalyst—for the local urban farming movement.
Cultivate KC has four programs, including the three-year-old Westport Commons Farm, located on a former track field located behind the old neighborhood high school.
“We have market stands and we have an EBT machine,” Daniel Robinson says. “We’re sharing land with other growers here, including some refugees who have graduated from our program.”
One March afternoon, Robinson oversees a handful of volunteers as they shape beds for cool-season crops (leafy greens, broccoli) in the new eighty-foot-long hoop house. One in the group is a regular volunteer and a Midtown neighborhood resident who seems to know his way around a backhoe. Robinson focuses his attention on the novices in the group. He points out a patch of dirt in the field that has been designated for an upcoming “compost fest,” where a large composting system will be built by volunteers. Two graduates from the program farm a nearby plot, and the rest of the farm is managed by Robinson.
